The morning sky was a sheet of tarnished silver, caught between storm and sunlight—too bright to be mercy, too pale to be hope.
The wind scraped against rusted girders as Talgat crouched beneath the broken spine of a tower, one hand steady on the ground, the other brushing grit from his blade.
Below him, three figures moved through the ruins—slow, careful, unarmed.
A scavenger trio.
Cee-Ar-Tee walked first, his gait deceptively human. Cee-Too followed, clutching a sensor pack half his size. Between them, Kaodin moved lightly, scanning the debris-strewn corridor with eyes still too young to belong to this world.
"They won't see me," Talgat thought, steadying his breath. "They'll only see the prey I pretend to be."
He pressed two fingers to the comm at his collar. "Target group in sight. Three travelers. Unarmed. Moving east through the corridor near the old metro shell."
Korren's voice crackled faintly through static, low and calm.
"Understood. The charge is set. When you reach marker B, trigger collapse. You'll be inside their field before they realize it."
Talgat's jaw tightened. "Understood."
He waited for the wind to shift—then rose and began to move. His steps left no sound, his shadow broken by the ruin's teeth.
Kaodin paused mid-step. The air trembled faintly beneath his feet, as if the ground itself had inhaled.
"Wait," he said.
Cee-Ar-Tee's sensors blinked amber. "Structural resonance detected—probability of collapse—"
The world broke open.
Beams snapped with the sound of thunder. Concrete groaned, twisting, falling in sheets. Dust devoured light.
Kaodin didn't think—his body simply moved.
Muscles coiled, breath slowed, heartbeat fell into rhythm with something ancient, instinctive. He pulled Cee-Too back just as a support column crashed inches away.
Time stretched thin.
His vision burned red for half a heartbeat—Qi flaring from the pit of his abdomen to his limbs, electricity made flesh.
And then it was gone.
He landed in a crouch amid the haze, heart pounding, breath like flame.
Through the dust, a shadow stumbled, coughing, clutching a wound.
Kaodin's instincts snapped. He lunged forward, seized the man by the collar, and slammed him against a fallen slab.
"Who are you!?" he demanded, breath ragged.
The man's eyes—gray, steady, too calm for terror—met his.
"Talgat," he wheezed. "I'm not—your enemy—"
Something in the voice stalled Kaodin's hand. The rhythm of violence caught mid-beat.
The Qi within him throbbed, begging for release—yet beneath it, something human resisted.
He's not afraid. He's just… tired.
Before Kaodin could decide, a sound sliced through the ruins—a sharp, whistling cry carried on the wind.
A signal.
From the rooftops, Nyla and her squad emerged like specters.
Their silhouettes rose through the dust, rifles aimed, movements practiced, rehearsed a hundred times before dawn.
The storm-light turned their visors into mirrors.
"There they are!" Nyla's voice rang through the comms. "All teams—surround and hold fire!"
Cee-Ar-Tee's sensors pulsed scarlet. "Multiple hostiles detected. Twelve… no, fourteen."
Kaodin turned, shielding Cee-Too instinctively. The boy clung to his sleeve, trembling.
Talgat straightened, his act of exhaustion almost too convincing. "They followed me here," he rasped. "I—I tried to lose them—"
But Kaodin caught the flicker in his tone. Something rehearsed. Too neat.
"Why are they chasing you?" Kaodin asked.
Talgat's eyes flicked upward, just for a breath. Kaodin followed the glance—and saw movement in the rafters.
Red scope lights. Dozens.
"Down!" he shouted.
Gunfire split the air.
For seconds that felt like eternity, the world became a rhythm of chaos. Bullets screamed through metal ribs and shattered glass.
Kaodin's body responded before thought—each movement a thread pulled from some memory older than logic.
He moved through smoke and echo.
A low kick disarmed one raider.
An elbow met another's jaw, crushing it in silence.
His breath synced with impact—each strike punctuated by a pulse of inner heat.
Dust spiraled in rings around him, drawn by the Qi emanating from his body.
To those watching through scopes, it must have looked like the air itself bent around the boy.
High above, Korren watched through his recon lens. The feed flickered from Talgat's chest cam to his own scope.
The boy moved like water—fluid, unstoppable.
"Impossible…" he whispered. "Not augmentation. Not programming. This is something else."
Beside him, Nyla's voice came through the link, steady but uncertain.
"Boss, he's just a kid."
Korren smiled faintly. "A kid who just outpaced my best soldiers."
Then came the silence—the kind that follows ruin.
Nyla stood at the ridge, rifle still raised but unmoving. Through her scope, she saw Kaodin kneeling beside Cee-Too, chest heaving, eyes half-glazed with confusion.
Her finger hovered over the trigger—then dropped.
"Enough," she whispered, though no one had told her to.
The radio clicked. Korren's tone returned, quieter this time. "Pull back."
She hesitated. "We're letting them go?"
"Not letting," Korren replied. "Observing."
As the dust began to settle, Kaodin glanced toward Talgat—half-conscious, coughing, his disguise still intact.
The boy's chest ached.
"Why didn't I kill him?" he thought.
But the answer was already there, somewhere deep beneath his exhaustion.
Because something inside him refused to become the thing this world wanted him to be.
The faint red light faded from his skin, leaving only the trembling aftertaste of warmth.
Above, the storm gathered again, gray and blue like bruised glass.
And from far beyond the horizon, thunder rolled—quiet, deliberate, inevitable.